Maybe I'm a little ahead (for a change) on planning for holiday gifts, but I've got an idea and I need some help sorting out the details.

I've been thinking about compiling some recipes into a functional and attractive format to give along with some of the more unusual ingredients in those recipes. Have any of you created your own cookbook? How did you do it - what sort of software, format, etc. did you use? I saw some nice little recipe card holders at La Cuisine (almost like small photo albums) - fabric covered with plastic sleeves to hold 3 x 5 cards, but that's not really what I have in mind.

I found a few ideas here and here, but I'd be interested to hear what you all might have done. Thanks!

I'd guess it depends on what you want it to be -- look nice or be really functional. I'd personally prefer very functional. To me that means a simple high quality three ring binder with inserted pages of paper with recipes on them inside of plastic covers. This is something that I have been thinking about for simplifying my own often used recipes and how I access them.

Why? Right now, I have a bajazillion different print outs from even more websites with recipes. Sometimes I have the same recipe printed out 2, 3,k 4 or more times, some with notes, some without, and the notes are usually never the same. It's a pain in the butt to locate the right recipe when I want it.

So, I hope to make a 'standards' or 'repertoire' notebook with how I have described above for the stuff I make a lot.

Now, organizing it is another matter entirely. Probably by type of recipe, like Appetizers, Soups, Salads, Entrrees, Desserts and Other would be my guess with no order inside each section.

I do am going through the same thing.

Look at this thread http://www.donrockwell.com/index.php?showt...amp;hl=software

Many things I now download, I just throw into Word and print them out.

I am now using a three ring binder with plastic protectors for the pages. I have one binder for recipes I have tried and liked and another for new ones and ones I did not like (so I do not repeat my mistakes). I still have my grandmother's and great grandmothers recipes to transcribe.

I did take a look at the other thread and have used the more functional 3-ring binder system for myself. I have it organized much as Pool Boy described and it works pretty well for me.

For purposes of this particular project, I am more interested in the presentation as it will be given as a gift and isn't just for my personal organizational purposes. Seems like the self-publishing website mentioned in one of the links in my original post might be a starting point.

This may be overdoing it for your purposes, but the rec.food.cooking newsgroup did a cookbook several years ago. i forgot how they printed/published it. If I can get my hands on my copy, I can give you better details.

Hi Jackie: Do you have pictures of the food? I haven't seen a recipe book, but a friend did a beautiful "isn't my family cute" book for the grandparents at snapfish.com-- there we plenty of captions- i'm unsure if there's a text limit, but it was a gorgeous book...

UPDATE: Just sent an email to snapfish, will let you know the re. I hope you won't be mad if I copy your great idea!

Snapfish was of no help. However, I just saw this from washingtonpost.com- it lists all the cooking classes in the area and voila!
Create Your Own Cookbook

Dianne Hennessy King, 703-281-5281

tuckking@aol.com

4th year. Learn how to publish your own family, community, or national cookbook. Students receive a copy of a cookbook the class will produce. $50 for Vienna residents, $62.50 for nonresidents. Vienna Community Center, 120 Cherry St. SE.

Thanks Stella308! I can speak to Snapfish a little bit - I recently saw a book of wedding photos that a friend received. I'm not entirely sure the layout would work for what I have in mind, but the product was nice. Similar to a child's book, the pages were glossy with a collage of pictures on each one and a glossy hardback cover. The whole thing was about 6" x 6".

I'm starting to think that I may be better off sticking to something more simple - heavy paper bound with ribbon ties or something like that .

In a discussion of doing a similar project elsewhere, someone proposed using a pbwiki and publishing via lulu.com. I'm just investigating it now, but it sounds like it might work for your purposes.

How did things go with this project - did anyone make their own cookbook?

We have many favorite dishes that my mom made through the years. She didn't use recipes for these dishes - she just eyeballed quantities of ingredients and improvised as she went along. I'm thinking of working with my mom to write recipes for these dishes and create a family cookbook that I can give to family members as Christmas gifts. I just started looking at www.lulu.com (though I would need to get moving to get it done in time for Christmas).

Did you see this thread?

I spoke too soon - planning happened, but I'm sitting here...what is it - 9 days before Christmas still wondering what the heck to do about the recipes. The road to hell....

See above

I have looked at this Tastebook concept and wish I'd gotten my act together sooner - I like the idea of providing a book with some recipes in it and then leaving it to the recipient to use the remaining credits to fill in the rest (to their taste).

Saw this concept recently on AllRecipes.com. You can download recipes from their site, or upload your own recipes as well. Plus, they let you include photos. It lets you have a table of contents, but it still looks a little basic. Not sure if its something that I would want for myself.

http://allrecipes.com/features/more/createacookbook.aspx

I know this response is way too late for your Christmas post but hopefully it will help someone out down the road. We got married in October 2007 and gave as a favor to all of our guests (each couple) a cookbook filled with recipes that we have created, found, tweaked, plus many old family recipes from both of our families. We used G&R Publishing http://www.gandrpublishing.com/ and from start to finish was about a month and a half. You enter alll of your recipes online, they send you back a proof for editing. Glossy color coverstock back and front with a spiral binding. We ended up being very happy with them and I think they worked out to about $7 each in the end. It enabled us to personalize the cookbook, which was important to us for our wedding. But I do like the look of the Tastebook, more professional. So just another option for someone looking for the gift type cookbook, not the please keep me organized cookbook.

Thanks Wbsmiles - this looks like a nice option. How many recipes/pages did your cookbook turn out to be?

I really do like the looks of Tastebook especially that you can leave credits/space for the recipient to add their own recipe selections (as I said above). I just wound up printing out the recipes, getting some colored 4"x6" cardstock, gluing the recipes on and, ahem...borrowing the laminator at work. It's not a beautiful final product, but it's functional and, as I only had a small number of recipes, made the most sense.

You're not the only one. I started thinking more in depth about putting together a family cookbook, and I realized that I needed way more time than the 6 weeks or so I had before Christmas. In addition to compiling the recipes as told to me by my mom, I want to test them to make sure that her estimates are correct. I also think it would be nice to include pictures so I'm making this a longer term project (hopefully for next Christmas?). So thanks to those who added more info, it's still going to come in handy for me.

I recently heard about Tastebook from another online community I post on and was going to mention it here (but saw that it had been brought up previously). I can pass on that the person who ordered said that they were very pleased with it, although she ordered hers before they allowed uploading of photos. So, she couldn't comment on that. Also, the TAT was fairly short. All in all, she was pleased with the experience.